SW7N Review: Dark Disciple – Unlikely Allies, Impossible Odds, and the Heart of Darkness

Dark Disciple book cover

 

Today we have an advance review of Del Rey’s upcoming Star Wars novel, a Clone Wars era story that teams Jedi Master Quinlan Vos with Asajj Ventress, sending the unlikely pair against Count Dooku in a desperate attempt to bring an end to the war once and for all. Read on for a spoiler-free look at “Star Wars: Dark Disciple” by Christie Golden.

 

 

 

As the Clone Wars rage on with no apparent end in sight, and with the fighting taking an increasing toll on them and on the Republic as a whole, the Jedi Council makes a bold and unexpected decision: to bring hostilities with the Separatists to a quick end by assassinating their leader, Count Dooku.

 

This highly unorthodox and sensitive mission is assigned to Jedi Master Quinlan Vos, the one member of the Order whose talents and temperament seem tailor-made for such an undertaking. But taking out Count Dooku, formidable a task as it is, is only part of the challenge. In order to get close enough to the Separatist leader to kill him, the Council orders Vos to enlist the aid of a long-time nemesis of the Order – Dooku’s former apprentice, Asajj Ventress. Now a bounty hunter living deep in the fringes of galactic society, Ventress is bent upon revenge against Dooku for having cast her aside. Although the Jedi have no reason whatsoever to trust her, if anyone can help Vos to assassinate Dooku and bring an end to the war, it’s Ventress.

 

Quinlan_VosUsing his experience at working undercover along with his own not inconsiderable personal charms, Vos poses as a fellow bounty hunter as he establishes a rapport with Ventress and persuades her to take him on as a partner. And, as the mission unfolds, their partnership takes some unexpected turns that lead Vos perilously close to the dark side of the Force, and that lead both of them into a far deeper and more complicated relationship than either could possibly have foreseen.The result is an action-packed tale in which both Vos and Ventress are forced to face their own innermost natures and to make fundamental choices that will change them forever, and that could lead the galaxy either to lasting peace or its final ruin.

 

Vos and Ventress

 

I went into “Star Wars: Dark Disciple” completely unprepared and unspoiled, which is how I prefer to experience any literary or cinematic experience. Not having read any background on the book, I must admit, I didn’t particularly like “Dark Disciple” at first. The last Star Wars novel that I read prior to this was James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis. That book impressed me as being a rich and textured exploration of the relationship between Palpatine and his former master as well as the nature of the dark side of the Force itself. If it didn’t quite reach the level of the ancient, dusty, leather-bound historical tome that it seemed to be trying to be, in my opinion it came damned close.

 

“Dark Disciple”, by contrast, seemed to be more of a young readers book, with short chapters, comparatively simple, accessible text and a story that felt rather predictable and by-the-numbers. By the time I’d gotten about a third of the way through the book, all I could think was that it felt like an expanded story treatment for an episode of The Clone Wars. And of course, when I finally did some research on the story behind the book itself, I found that there was a very good reason why “Dark Disciple” felt like a story treatment for a Clone Wars episode–it was indeed an unused story arc that had been intended for Season 7.

 

Asajj
Perhaps unsurprisingly, once I was aware of this, I found myself far more easily and thoroughly drawn into the story. While “Dark Disciple” may not be the meatiest Star Wars novel I’ve ever read, it is (or should have been) a fantastic Clone Wars episode. When discussing the true gems of the series, many fans point to storylines like the Mortis trilogy from Season 3 or the final four-episode arc of Season 6 that culminates in Yoda taking his first steps toward learning how to retain his identity after death. As I continued on through “Dark Disciple”, I realized that it almost certainly would have ranked up there with the best story arcs of the series.

 

And in the end, it’s a good, solid Star Wars tale, combining great action and battle scenes with the kind of interpersonal drama that we’ve come to expect. The developing relationship between Vos and Ventress, while not entirely unpredictable, is handled in a way that makes sense for both characters, and that I feel resolves itself in a satisfying way. And given the fact that it’s a story about a Jedi being sent to assassinate an enemy, there is a good bit of delving into the nature of the dark side of the Force and the paths that can lead to it (and potentially back from it.)

 

Vos and Kenobi

 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Quinlan Vos as a character. He’s sort of “The Dude” of the Jedi Order (only without the Lebowski-esque penchant for bowling, Creedence and sinsemilla) and it’s always fun to watch his fun and worldly nature confound and exasperate the more reserved and serious members of the Jedi Order. Vos’ mercurial personalty is used to great effect in “Dark Disciple”, especially as he slowly begins to chip away at the walls that Ventress has spent the better part of a lifetime building around herself. And this makes it all the more compelling when, over the course of their mission together, the shades of grey that make Vos such an interesting character begin to take on darker and more shadowy hues.

 

asajj_02

 

Ventress, on the other hand, is wrestling with her own demons, trying to balance her long-standing urge to wall herself off from others with her uncharacteristic feelings for Vos and, ultimately, with her need to finally come to terms with the dark side of the Force and the influence that she’s allowed it to exert over her life. Ventress has come a long way from her first appearances in the Tartakovsky Clone Wars animated microseries way back in 2003. Back then, she came across as a fairly one-dimensional character designed primarily as a plot device to push Anakin closer to the dark side. The later CGI Clone Wars series added depth to her as she was cast aside by Dooku and forced to redefine who she was, occasionally showing a slightly more human side. “Dark Disciple” picks this up and expands upon it quite well, showing more of the complexities of Ventress’ character and placing her into a situation where she is forced to grow, to change, and ultimately to make the choices that she has long resisted making.

 

Where I feel that “Dark Disciple” falls a bit short is where the Jedi themselves are concerned. Part of this is not the fault of author Christie Golden, of course. Dark Disciple is, as I mentioned before, an adaptation of an eight-part story arc that was to have been used in Season 7 of The Clone Wars. So, to a certain extent, the story and characters were already established. But the Jedi Council’s decision to cast aside their principles and send one of their own to commit a cold-blooded assassination seems a bit too far out of character for them, even under the duress of a costly and endless state of war. And their choice of Vos for the mission, entertaining though it certainly is from a reader’s perspective, seems fairly ill-advised, given the fact that the character already tends to skirt along the greyer edges of the Force.

 

But, as was the case with so many episodes of The Clone Wars, it’s just one of those things that,  in the interest of just rolling with the show, you basically just try to overlook.

 

Yoda and Jedi Council - The Clone Wars

 

The other issue I have with the Jedi is with Yoda in particular, and this has become a pet peeve of mine over the past 15 years or so. Between the prequel films, both Clone Wars series and the various novels in which he has appeared, Yoda’s speech pattern has become more and more a caricature of itself. Go back and watch Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and listen closely to Yoda’s lines. They are a mix of inverted “Yoda-speak” and regular ordinary speech, and the inversion is a lot more prevalent when Yoda is in his “prankster” mode when he first appears to Luke on Dagobah. When Yoda and Obi Wan are discussing whether or not Luke is to be trained, the inversion almost vanishes as Yoda becomes more serious.

 

Inexplicably, Lucas began to write more and more of Yoda’s dialogue in that stereotypical inverted form in the prequel films, with my own “facepalm” moment coming in Attack of the Clones with the mindbogglingly awkward line, “Around the survivors, a perimeter create!” And it’s just gotten worse, to the point where it now seems that no thought is really given to the way Yoda speaks a given line. In “Dark Disciple”, virtually ever sentence Yoda utters is inverted. “Exactly the same, does every sentence sound. Always at the end, the verb must come. Never deviating from this simple pattern, Yoda’s speech does.”

 

Again, I cannot place all of the blame for this on the author. This is a rather lazy pattern that Lucas and LFL’s writers have fallen into with regard to Yoda’s dialogue. But it would be nice if somebody at LFL would go back and take a good hard listen to the way Yoda spoke in the OT, particularly ESB. His speech patterns were far more varied and complex and not limited to this single little inversion gimmick.

 

ventress

 

Overall though, nagging little issues like this aside, I found “Star Wars: Dark Disciple” to be a fun if rather simple read. The trick to truly enjoying it, I quickly learned, was to take it for what it is: an adaptation of a series of episodes from The Clone Wars. In that respect, I not only found myself caught up in the story, but also wishing VERY much that Disney and LFL hadn’t cut The Clone Wars series off at the knees and that this tale had been allowed to play out onscreen as it was originally intended to have.

 

But, since that’s clearly not in the cards, I’m glad they decided to release this as a novel. Christie Golden did a great job of translating the scripts for these episodes onto the printed page. As a novel, it may not display the scope and depth of some of the other Star Wars books that came before it, but as a Star Wars adventure, as a way of escaping once again to that Galaxy Far, Far Away, it’s a mighty fun ride with some compelling character development and other surprises along the way that give it some extra punch.

 

And as an added bonus, after you’ve finished “Dark Disciple”, you may very well catch yourself pondering, koan-like, an intriguing existential question that Vos raises more than once in the book: “What’s worse… to have unhappy stories, or to have no story at all?” Vos and Ventress each find their own answers to this. So, perhaps, might each of us as our own personal tales continue to unfold.

 

 

Finally, speaking of personal tales, readers of the Star Wars Insider will have the opportunity to read a short story, also by Christie Golden, that features Asajj Ventress in an adventure that takes place shortly prior to “Dark Disciple”:

 

 

Star Wars: Dark Disciple will be officially released and available on July 7th.

 

+ posts

38 thoughts on “SW7N Review: Dark Disciple – Unlikely Allies, Impossible Odds, and the Heart of Darkness

  • June 25, 2015 at 10:21 pm
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    This has been the one book other than aftermath that I’ve been most looking forward to as Ventress was by far my favourite character in the Clone Wars. Glad to hear I wont be disappointed then! Also I completely agree with the dumb Yoda-speak, that ‘perimeter’ line bugged me even as a kid.

    • June 25, 2015 at 10:33 pm
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      Yeah, I think you’ll dig it. Like I said, it’s not one of those more in-depth novels like Darth Plagueis was, but is far more a light and easy read. But I think they nail both Vos’ and Ventress’ characters quite well. This would have made one helluva killer Clone Wars arc, had they finished it.

      Aftermath, though… now that’s the one I’m REALLY looking forward to! ;^)

  • June 25, 2015 at 10:25 pm
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    Image reminds me of Christie and Driver.

    • June 25, 2015 at 10:33 pm
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      I can see a bit of that, sure.

  • June 25, 2015 at 10:43 pm
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    Vos is my favorite character. I am wondering if Obiwon Anthology film happens, Vos would appear in some fashion.

    • June 26, 2015 at 12:17 am
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      He is one of the best characters. A stand alone movie about him would be awesome – or films in which he is present more than one minute…

      In Episode I you can see him for moments, his Episode III action scene was deleted. Question marks…

  • June 25, 2015 at 10:46 pm
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    Isn’t the NDA active until July 7?

    • June 25, 2015 at 11:20 pm
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      No. The book is officially released on July 7. Reviews can be published within 2 weeks before that.

  • June 25, 2015 at 10:50 pm
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    I wonder if Christie Golden is any relation to Michael Golden who drew some of the old Marvel Star Wars comics.

  • June 25, 2015 at 11:23 pm
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    Sounds like I’m gonna love/hate this novel… hmm…

    Off topic though, do you really consider the Mortis arc a true gem of the series? Most people I know absolutely hate it and view it as Lucas’s bad attempt to surplant much deeper philosophical EU stories with his own dumbed down kids version. The arc started fine but really failed to deliver beyond ‘omg vader… but wait now they gotta forget that vision’

    • June 25, 2015 at 11:34 pm
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      I was never a fan of the Mortis arc myself. It seems to have a lot of fans, but I found it to be rather forced and heavy-handed as an explanation of the nature of the light and dark side of the Force and Anakin’s relationship to them. I didn’t hate the story, of course. It is just not one of the ones I gravitate toward when I revisit the series.

    • June 26, 2015 at 12:40 am
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      I agree.

      I always find it weird that a lot of CW fans gravitate towards that as some existential treatise of Clone Wars. Like the prequels, it almost gets there, but just not quite.

      The Yoda arc in the last season was more interesting to me.

    • June 26, 2015 at 11:27 am
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      The Mortis arc itself was so-so, but I really enjoyed when it showed back up in the FotJ EU series. That series added a lot more depth to the Mortis mythos and helped tie the EU together in a larger way.

      • June 26, 2015 at 6:47 pm
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        I read the FotJ series and then watched the Mortis arc…it was a bit ehhh for me.

        It makes sense how they tied it together but the whole Abeloth character was just out there for me personally.

  • June 25, 2015 at 11:26 pm
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    Hey Dekka! Could you give us a few spoilers in the cantina? I most likely wont be able to read the book, but would like to know some of the key points that could relate to EP7 and Rebels, as well as anything that might relate to the overall story of Star Wars.

    • June 25, 2015 at 11:35 pm
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      I reckon I could tell youse mugs a few things, sure… ;^)

  • June 25, 2015 at 11:40 pm
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    Yes Dekka, the Yoda dialog now has become an “eye-roller” and it’s old. I wondered if anyone else had ever noticed the on-again off-again inversion compared to present..it’s killing me. Good pen, buddy!

    • June 26, 2015 at 12:43 am
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      Thanks, compadre! Glad ya enjoyed my write-up.

      Yeah, there was a much more deliberate effort in ESB to differentiate between Yoda’s inverted speech when he was in “prankster” mode, and his more straightforward speech patterns when he was conveying something serious.

      It’s not like it was either/or. He still peppered his dialogue with the inversion even when he was being serious, but it was far less than we would hear when he was goofing on Luke.

      But these days, it’s gotten to the point when any time anyone writes Yoda dialogue, it’s almost as though they just write regular straight dialogue and run it through an online “Yoda-speak” translator app. There’s no thought behind it, just invert everything and call it a day.

      • June 26, 2015 at 5:42 pm
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        As far as I can tell, TESB was done rather intuitively, e.i, when the reverse speak worked, they did that, when the normal speech worked, they did that.

        If I recall, there was some draft of TESB script where Kasdan left notes / comments, where one of Yoda’s more confusing lines had a note to lucas saying: “figure out what his speech pattern is,”
        so I think to some degree, Kasdan was bugged by these grammar-shifts, and for the most part the pair worked out most of Yoda’s dialogue to be more or less consistent.
        However, it seems they opted to just simply ditch the Japanese grammar when it became too distracting, hence, rather than randomly spitting out “No, another, there is”
        instead, they [wisely] opted for the more familiar “no, there is another.”
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4JVcvR7IM0

        Sometimes intuition trumps logical rote.

        I’m willing to bet Kasdan would have taken the middle route on the “survivors” line.

        “Around the survivors, create a peremiter!” I think would be a good compromise, as it DOES flip things around, but not enough to sound stupid.

        Also, HOW COME YODA NEVER SHOUTS? IDK about you, but I for one would LOVE to see Yoda shouting out orders at high speed when the situation calls for it.
        Imagine rather than having Yoda standing calmly trying to figure out how best to phrase his sentence, instead they could have had him zipping back and forth, shouting out “Around the survivors form a peremeter!!” [a la Admiral Ackbar’s shouting of orders / trap-age updates] and then a clone-trooper badass nods “YES SIR!”

        Damn, that would be a 100% TESB Yoda,
        TESB Yoda would have made that battle strategy his bitch.
        I feel so robbed.

  • June 26, 2015 at 12:27 am
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    im more fascinated that asajj has hair now

    • June 26, 2015 at 3:32 pm
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      Sith have it in their armpits too.

    • June 26, 2015 at 5:44 pm
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      It’s okay, I was disturbed when Krillin grew hair.
      Maybe baldness is part of the Sith life-regimen?

  • June 26, 2015 at 12:37 am
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    My interpretation of this review was nothing more than a polite way of saying, “this book sucks.” Sounds like we have another stinker in new canon literature. -off to Amazon to cancel my pre-order.

    • June 26, 2015 at 12:55 am
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      Well, look… if the book had sucked, I’d have come flat out and said that it sucked. Seriously, I’ve got no problem doing that.

      But it doesn’t suck. It’s a fun story, and once it gets going it never really lets up. My initial problem with it was that, as I said, the last SW book I read was Darth Plagueis, which was a whole different animal. My impression of Dark Disciple is that it’s written in a far simpler style than Darth Plagueis was, and that threw me at first because I was expecting (without realizing it) something similar to the Plagueis novel.

      Also, Dark Disciple is based on a series of 8 Clone Wars scripts, so the narrative feels very much like that of a TCW episode. There’s nothing wrong with that, and as long as you take it as something more akin to a movie novelization, Dark Disciple is a fun read.

      Bear in mind, I’m currently in the middle of reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (from which they adapted the movie “Master and Commander.”) Those suckers are densely packed enough with nautical jargon and details that they published a glossary for the whole series as a separate volume. So perhaps that helped to make the difference seem that much more stark when I read Dark Disciple.

      As long as you’re not expecting Tolstoy, Dark Disciple is a fun read. As I said in the review, it’s not the most challenging piece of literature in the world, but I certainly don’t think it sucks.

      • June 26, 2015 at 1:22 am
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        Like you I juggle fiction with history. I tend to balance the American Civil War with the galactic civil war; helps keep my academic equilibrium. Sounds as if Dark Diciple is similar to Lords of the Sith (which I did enjoy).

      • June 26, 2015 at 5:48 pm
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        From what I’ve heard, “Darth Plagueis” is sorta like “Apocolypse Now”, whereas Dark Disciple -from your description- sounds more like, IDK, Pulp Fiction or something [I like movies but I don’t see much of them]
        So I imagine it would be quite a mind jump.
        Eventually I’ll dig this book out of someone’s trash and probably enjoy it immensely, but I like your article.

        • June 26, 2015 at 6:51 pm
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          I’d say that’s not an inappropriate comparison there. Dark Disciple has more of that light, pulp novel feel to it than the Plagueis book did.

          It’s fun, though. No doubt about that.

  • June 26, 2015 at 12:42 am
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    Sounds like a better version of ‘A New Dawn’.

    AKA A novel that would have been better served as a comic book or a cartoon mini-series. They probably should leave the content to its own medium instead of salvaging it to another medium.

    • June 26, 2015 at 1:06 am
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      You always risk losing something in translation when you shift something from its intended medium over to a different one. We see it all the time with books that end up being made into movies that don’t really work.

      Dark Disciple, left in its natural state, would have been a great Clone Wars story arc. After Disney/LFL canned the series, everything that’s been done since then with the unfinished episodes has been something of a salvage job. And that’s just never going to be an ideal situation.

      That said, once I saw Dark Disciple for what it was, rather than for what I had imagined that it might be (with absolutely no basis in fact) I really enjoyed reading it. It’s a Clone Wars episode, and a helluva good one at that. When you do read Dark Disciple, remember that and let your mind paint the images in front of you. Christie Golden’s adaptation of those 8 lost episodes makes it real easy to do that, and though it’s not quite as good as seeing the actual episode, it’s still a lot of fun.

      Unless you didn’t like TCW, of course, in which case… well, see, I don’t like olives. At all. And so the best olive on the face of the planet is still going to taste like utter ass to me. So…

      • June 26, 2015 at 7:03 pm
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        I hate olives.

        But I do like CW!

  • June 26, 2015 at 8:52 am
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    Yoda’s speech is not dumb

    • June 26, 2015 at 2:54 pm
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      I am pretty sure you are missing the point.

    • June 26, 2015 at 3:42 pm
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      I completely agree. Yoda’s speech is not dumb. I never said it was.

      What I said is, it was never JUST about the inverted syntax until comparatively recently. Again, I suggest you go back and watch Empire Strikes Back. When Yoda first shows up and he’s putting Luke on with the whole “goofy swamp dweller” routine, he does the inverted speech quite steadily. Then when he and Luke are in his hut and he finally drops the act, his first sentence is just straight-out English – “I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.” And much of that serious discussion with Obi Wan about whether to teach Luke follows suit. Then, whenever he’s being serious, he tends to drop the inversion again, or at least seriously lighten up on it. This created an interesting texture to not only his speech, but his character.

      Now, whenever anyone writes Yoda’s dialogue, virtually every sentence is inverted regardless of whether Yoda is being serious, goofy or anything else. There’s almost no variation, which isn’t how his speech originally was.

      So no, I’m not saying his speech is dumb. I’m saying that they’re just doing it wrong.

      • June 26, 2015 at 5:50 pm
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        Yeah, that’s another thing Yoda lost in PT: his sense of humor / hatred towards the sanity of those younger than him

  • June 26, 2015 at 10:29 am
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    Fantastic review Dekka! Looking forward to reading it.

    • June 26, 2015 at 3:46 pm
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      Thanks, Darth Zloi! Glad ya liked it. Looking forward to seeing what you think of the book when you get the chance to give it a read.

  • June 26, 2015 at 5:14 pm
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    All I want to know is do they whack Ventress or is she still salvageable for anthology films and Rebels.

  • June 27, 2015 at 7:54 pm
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    I’m intrigued about the blue woman in the final image… is she Chiss? Are they canon again?

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